Hi Nathan,
Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!
We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.
We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.
Important note!
Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.
If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.
Okay, let’s get started!
The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.
We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.
Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.
The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.
Regarding passion you picked Stage 3: I’m actively figuring out what my interests are by trying one or more of them out in some way .
Regarding perseverance you picked .
As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.
Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.
In week 2, we looked at your interests.
Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.
Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.
Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.
In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.
You said your top three values were benevolence, self-direction, and power.
You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.
When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was emotional stability.
You said your top three talents were kinesthetic, verbal, and analytic.
We then talked about goal hierarchies.
You said you were not sure yet about your top-level goal.
We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.
A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to finish recruiting. .
Here is how self-concordant that goal was:
Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.
It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!
Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.
We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:
Work Smart
In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.
You WOOPed!
For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Get an A on my Accounting midterm. .
For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said relief .
For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said tiredness, procrastination .
For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When it’s 2 hours before my exam, then I will grind. .
Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.
And here’s how much you learned
These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.
The important thing is that you learn something along the way!
In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.
You shared you’ve done daily practice in .
We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.
In week 8, we discussed feedback.
Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!
You said you felt motivated when receiving critical feedback, and motivated when receiving positive feedback.
We then turned to learning about stress.
In week 9, you reported feeling a little of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being relationships with others .
We also talked about adversity and failure.
Although related, adversity and failure are different:
Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.
However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…
Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.
And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.
We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.
Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.
You describe the habit you chose as Health .
Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.
Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?
So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.
In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.
Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.
Here’s how you described them:
You also wrote a gratitude letter to Coach .
In one word, you said it made you feel warm .
One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.
… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.
Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.
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Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?
Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.
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| grittiness and talent are both malleable |
| interest is an emotion. |
| For children, sampling and watching them closely is the best way to discover their interests. |
| Align goals into hierarchy and try to pursue a calling. |
| Use WOOP, it's one of the best scientific methods to achieve my goals. |
| flow is when challenge meets skill! |
| don't 'caboose'! |
| stress should be seen as potentially enhancing rather than definitely debilitating |
| higher socioeconomic status is correlated with higher likelihood of having mentorship |
In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.
Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:
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| Jaron Choe |
| Dear Nathan,
It's been a pleasure getting to know you over the semester. You're a sweet and sincere man with a good sense of humour that is figuring out life with a wonderful attitude. You're willing to share, to explore and to try new things and that's very inspiring.
I loved your project and presentation on learning korean. Learning another language is so hard, but you dedicated yourself to it and made some great results considering the short time! I don't know if it's something you'll continue to pursue, but I know that whatever you do want to do with life, you will do with ambition, discipline and care. Thank you for the semester Nathan! |
| Rebecca Kim |
| I actually met Nathan before Grit Lab. I knew him as this excited freshman who came to a club I was a part of; however, I did not know much beyond that. And that he was from New Zealand and played ping pong pretty seriously. Throughout this semester, I am lucky to have witnessed Nathan’s incredibly kind, open-minded, and easy-going personality. During our team discussions, he would always have something to contribute after someone shares their thoughts, which was comforting because it showed that he was actively and carefully listening to what we had to say. Nathan’s genuine care and curiosity for the other person was so apparent, and it set a warm tone for every team discussion. Something I admire about Nathan is his open-mindedness. He is eager to be put in new situations, to be challenged, and to simply experience life, which is much more than what many people are comfortable with. Nathan has definitely inspired and encouraged me this semester to be gritty, to be curious, and to seek new opportunities always.
Nathan’s Discovery Project of learning Korean was insightful and encouraging since it showed me the many different ways one could become better at learning a foreign language (which is something I always aspired to do). Nathan did his utmost to become better at the language: he watched TED talks on what was most helpful in learning Korean, he used WOOP to target areas he needed improvement on, he signed up for an online course to get better instruction, and he had a project BFF to practice Korean with. He really showed that immersing oneself in a foreign language takes a lot more than individual willpower. It takes deliberate practice and outside help. Nathan emphasized the importance of having someone to practice with and encourage you, and I think that can be applied to learning anything new. Moreover, Nathan spoke Korean in front of all of us, which took an immense amount of courage, and I admire that he took the extra step to show us how much he’s worked on this project this semester. |
| Danny Weinberger |
| Nathan is a friendly, smart, and humble person. He is interested in learning about others in a special way that makes them feel calm and welcomed. He is a diligent and efficient learner who brings out quality insights from lectures in a down to earth manner. The more you know Nathan, the more impressive you will discover him to be! Nathan’s grittiness combined with his ambitious goals sets him up for great success in life. Thank you Nathan!
Nathan’s Discovery Project was enlightening. Nathan did not take an easy way out but rather decided to learn Korean. New languages require a lot of effort and Nathan was willing to put it in. Nathan’s determination and perseverance shined bright in his discovery project. His learnings inspired me to not be afraid to try just because I might fail.
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We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.
Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?
Drumroll please…
Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.
In any case, grit is not built in a day…
…remember that progress is never smooth…
…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.
With grit and gratitude,
Angela and the Grit Lab team.